Miss Weston returned to her friends, and Dawn took up the thread of her life, which was every day extending and winding into new scenes of darkness and light. But a voice within her, told her that one day all the darkness would become light. She trusted that voice, for it was speaking unto her every day, and growing each hour into deeper recognition. What avails the love of our friends, if it be but for a few earthly days or years? What is the love of a mother to her child, without an eternity for its manifestation? "Whatever has lived upon earth still lives."

The mother, forced from her new-born child, sorrows over the physical separation. It is natural; but what power does she not possess to live and breathe into its spiritual unfolding. Silent, but subtle, like nature's most potent forces, her spirit descends into its being, and there dwells, molding it every hour into a higher form of life. Truth is at the basis of all theories, and, though man builds many a superstructure in accordance with his own fancy, he can in no way affect this truth. It is a natural law of the universe, that love should linger and remain after the habiliments of flesh are withdrawn. No one lives who has not felt, at times, the presence of the unseen; and it seems strange that there can be one so limited in thought and understanding as to say there is nought beyond the narrow limit of physical life to hold communion with our souls? Happy the man who opens the doors of his spirit wide for angel visitors. Happy the heart which knows by its own beating, when they come and go, for,

"It is a faith sublime and sure,
That ever round our head
Are hovering on noiseless wing,
The spirits of the dead."

It has been said that nothing is more difficult than to demonstrate a self-evident truth. To those who feel and know of this guardianship of friends, gone beyond, this affiliation of soul with soul, language is powerless to transmit the conviction. It must be felt and experienced, not reasoned into the mind, because it is a component of the soul, a legitimate portion of its life.

"I must go, and remain away a long time," said Dawn to her father, one morning, after they had just finished reading a letter from Florence.

"And why, may I ask?"

"Because we are replete with the same kind of life; our minds are set to the same strain, and exhaust each other. I can be more to myself and others, if I go, you will enter mother's sphere more completely in my absence, and thus shall we both be refreshed and strengthened."

"I feel the truth of your words, and I am glad to know that your philosophy of life so fully accords with my own."

"We have a superabundance of one quality of life in our home, and a change is absolutely requisite for our mental as well as for our physical well-being. Absence from it, separation between us, a going out into new atmospheres, a social mingling with persons we do not daily come in contact with, will produce the most beneficial results. This is what every family at times needs. One great objection I have to our marriage system is, that as society is now constittuted, it allows no freedom to the individual. The two are so exclusively together that they lose knowledge of themselves. They suffer physically and intellectually. On the other hand, if more freedom existed, if their lives took a broader scope, each would know each more perfectly, and absorb from others that vigor which would develop a natural growth of their own. For my part, I can never submit to the existing rules of married life."

"The analogies of the natural world to human life are good, for the rocky shore symbolizes the highest power of the human soul, which is endurance rather than action. To most persons such characters seem vapid and sentimental, lacking force and tone, and generally unfitted for the enterprises of the world. And yet there are forces in man beside the grappling and hammering manifestations of the day. There is a greater mastery in control, than in the exercise of power. An angry man may evince more energy than he who keeps calm in the heat of provocation, but the latter is the man of most power. In the common circumstances of life we must act, and act lawfully; but to bear and suffer is alone the test of virtue, for there come hours of pain and mental anguish when all action is vain, when motion of limb and mind is powerless; then do we learn

"How sublime it is
To suffer and be strong."

Then do we learn the great lesson that there is no quality more needed in our life than endurance. There is so much which occurs outside the circle of our own free will, accidents both mental and physical."

"And yet we feel there can be no accident."

"Nothing in the highest analysis which can be termed such, for all things are either in divine order, or under human responsibility, which latter power is too limited. What we term accidents are parts of, and belong to, the general plan, and when these occur, they serve to inspire us with endurance, which is no minor virtue-it is achievement-and bears its impress on the face. These thoughts are those of another, who has so well expressed them, that I have given them to you in his own language."

"I shall profit by your words, dear father. I shall need much of that heavenly quality which is so little appreciated, and apt to be mistaken for lack of force."

"May you grow in all the Christian graces, and be life and light to yourself and others, always remembering that your light is none the less for lighting another's torch."

"I shall go to-day to G--. Will you drive there, yourself alone?"

"I will."

An hour later they were on their way to a quiet village, a few miles from the Wyman's, where lived a friend of Dawn and her father, with whom she would stay a few days. The ride was delightful, and their communion so close and deep, that when they parted, it seemed as though they had never realized before, their need of each other. This feeling of tenderness brought them nearer in soul, if that were possible. It was like moonlight to the earth, mellowing and softening all lines and angles.

"Dearest father, did I ever love you before?" said Dawn, throwing herself on his breast, at parting.

"If you had not been working yourself so many years into my heart, you could not touch its very centre as you do now," he said, wiping the moisture from his eyes, and folding her more tenderly to himself. "Partings are but closest approaches, drawings of the heart-strings, which tell how strong the cords are which bind us to each other." The door of the friend's house was thrown open just at this point of his remarks, and a welcome face smiled on Dawn, who sprung from her seat beside her father, into the arms of her friend.

"Take good care of her, and send her home when you are weary," said her father, and turned his face homeward, but lingered long in spirit in the atmosphere of his child.

As he wound his way slowly up the long, shady avenue, that led to his home, another love came to his bosom, and transfused his being with a different, but equally uplifting life. A moment more, and he held that other love close to his heart, the woman whom he had chosen to brighten his days and share his happiness.

"It seems as though Dawn had returned with you," she said, as she received his loving caress.

"She is with me, and never so near as now. Heaven grant I may not make her an idol," he said, fervently, and then, almost regretting his words, he gazed tenderly into the eyes of his wife.

"You would find me no iconoclast," she said, "for I, too, love her with my whole heart, and am jealous at times of all that takes her from us. Yet she must go; day must g............